There are thousands of catalogued microalga species, although only a few of them are commercially exploited. The main requirements a microalga species must meet to be susceptible of industrial use are suitable growth and a different biochemical composition conferring it the highest possible added value. In this sense, the microalga species that are commercially exploited today range from Chlorella and Nannochloropsis for aquaculture (Borowitzka, Journal of Biotechnology, 70(1-3), (1999) 313-321) to Spirulina for human consumption (Morist et al., Process Biochemistry, 37(5), (2001), 535-547), or Dunaliella and Haematococcus for the production of carotenoids such as beta-carotene and astaxanthin, respectively (Guerin et al., Trends in Biotechnology, 21(5), (2003) 210-216).
Although many other species have been described as potentially interesting because of their valuable biochemical profile, their low growth rate or the difficulty of producing them due to stress sensitivity and/or easy contamination have prevented said commercial exploitation. This is the case of the microalgae Isochrysis galbana (Molina et al., Process Biochemistry, 30(8), (1995) 711-719) or Monodus Subterraneous (Belarbi et al., Process Biochemistry, 35(9), (2000) 951-969). In relation to the production of lutein, the microalga Muriellopsis sp. has been adequately grown in small, 50 L, laboratory scale tubular photobioreactors with production capacities of up to 180 mg lutein/m2/day, although the photosynthetic efficiency is very low, 4% (José A. Del Campo et al., Journal of Biotechnology 85 (2001) 289-295). The results obtained with the new isolated strain double said production capacity, pending optimization.